Ocwen Financial Corporation (NYSE: OCN) announced Monday that it has completed the final phase of transferring 1 million forward loans to a new servicing platform, and has consolidated its legal entity under a new name that reflects an acquisition the company made last year.
The final phase of the company’s loan transfer process and transition involved migrating from REALServicing to the Black Knight LoanSphere MSP platform. In total, Ocwen transferred approximately one million loans to the MSP platform, according to a press release announcing the news.
“All loan transfers were executed after a significant amount of preparation, training, rigorous pre-boarding testing and customer communications,” the press release said.
On top of the completed loan transfers, Ocwen also completed the merger of licensed legal entity Ocwen Loan Servicing into PHH Mortgage Corporation. Resulting from the loan transfers and merger, Ocwen’s mortgage services will now be provided through two primary brands: PHH Mortgage Corporation for the company’s forward servicing and lending, and Liberty Home Equity Solutions for reverse lending and servicing.
“The successful completion of the loan transfers and legal entity consolidation are the most important milestones in the PHH integration,” said Glen A. Messina, president and CEO of Ocwen, in the release. “Completion of these critical activities serves as a catalyst for continued growth and process improvement, and enables our planned cost re-engineering for the balance of 2019 and 2020. The conversion to MSP consolidates all loans onto a single, industry-leading servicing platform and enables us to drive future enhancements for our customers, investors and employees.”
The completion of these tasks will allow Ocwen to fulfill its objectives in strengthening the company as it aims for a return to profitability, Messina added.
After initially announcing the deal for Ocwen to acquire PHH Corp in February of 2018, the $360 million transaction was ultimately completed that October. The following month, Ocwen announced the hiring of Timothy J. Yanoti to oversee the company’s forward and reverse mortgage lending activity.
While Ocwen has endured some recent financial woes, Liberty Home Equity Solutions has continued to be a point of positivity in the company’s portfolio. Still, because of the larger company’s recent financial difficulties, it has taken a number of corrective actions to try and return to profitability overall.
In February, it was revealed on an earnings call that Liberty had recently begun a pilot program for a new proprietary jumbo reverse mortgage product. Q1 2019 earnings for May also reflected Liberty’s generally stronger performance when compared to other operations at Ocwen.
